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Andrew Marcus, the writer and producer of the full-length documentary film “Hating Breitbart,” first met Andrew Breitbart when he was covering the tea party movement in 2010.
“Filming tea party events, I came across Andrew Breitbart and was captivated by his energy and his commitment,” Marcus told WND in an interview. “We approached Breitbart with the idea (of making a film) and Andrew loved it.”
Marcus explained Breitbart had to agree to be followed around for what turned out to be the larger part of two years, without having editorial control over the film.
“Andrew didn’t see the film until we were just about done,” Marcus explained. “He saw the final rough-cut, when we were in the last stages of post-production.”
How did Breitbart react to seeing the film the first time?
“He loved it,” Marcus said, “so much so that he came up with a brilliant idea of how to promote the film.”
‘Occupy Breitbart’
Marcus explained Breitbart’s promotional concept.
“In a flash of intuition, Breitbart came up with the idea of funding the Occupy movement to create and film an ‘Occupy Breitbart’ movement,” Marcus explained.
“The idea was to fund the Occupy movement with an anonymous grant, requiring only that the Occupy movement film every step of their ‘Occupy Breitbart’ production.”
Then, just as “Hating Breitbart” was about to be released, Breitbart planned to hold a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
“Breitbart would then come out on the stage at the National Press Club and announce that he was the ‘anonymous’ who had funded ‘Occupy Breitbart,'” Marcus continued, pointing out the idea was a lot like guerrilla warfare.
“It was a brilliant idea,” Marcus said. “Breitbart wanted to demonstrate the Occupy movement was nothing more than a ‘for-hire’ protest of anarchists with no real message. Breitbart believed that exposing ‘Occupy Breitbart’ as a fraud was the perfect launching pad for what he wanted to say in our ‘Hating Breitbart’ documentary.”
Marcus said what motivated Breitbart was a desire to expose the political left as a “hate machine.”
“Breitbart’s message was that if you don’t go along with the politically correct message of the radical left, then the leftist activists and media turn on you and try to destroy you,” Marcus said.
“Breitbart very much wanted to confront and expose that tactic for what it is – intolerant and hateful. His point was the radical left hates anyone who doesn’t agree with them. ‘Hating Breitbart’ was not only the title of the documentary, it was what Breitbart wanted to explain the radical left was all about.”
Capturing Breitbart
In his tracking of Breitbart for two years, Marcus captured undercover-video activist James O’Keefe strategizing with Breitbart on the release of O’Keefe’s famous “pimp and prostitute” exposure of ACORN.
Marcus documented the political left’s claim that O’Keefe’s and Breitbart’s goal was “not journalism,” but conservative activism.
The charge was about the best the radical left could do to defend itself against Breitbart’s relentless attacks exposing leftist hypocrisy.
Marcus creatively interweaves clips from Breitbart speeches and from television interviews, ranging from Keith Olbermann at MSNBC to Sean Hannity at Fox News, demonstrating Breitbart’s creative political debate skills in a variety of venues.
“If you keep portraying the tea party as homophobic and racist, instead of what they are – American patriots concerned about fiscal responsibility,” Breitbart challenged the media in one clip from a speech in New York City, “then I’m going to organize a tea party protest in downtown Manhattan, and these media liars won’t be able to get out to the Hamptons that weekend.”
Marcus also shows Breitbart’s sensitivity in clips with actor Orson Bean, Breitbart’s father-in-law. In one, Bean explains that when Breitbart first started dating his daughter, Breitbart was surprised to find out Bean was a conservative.
“He was surprised I had a book by Rush Limbaugh,” Bean explained, “but after he read the book, he called me up and said, ‘That’s really interesting.’ Andrew had been to college, and in those years he was a big lefty.”
‘I dodged a bullet’
Breitbart, a 1991 graduate of Tulane University, explains in scenes showing him returning to his college campus that it was probably better he did not take his college days too seriously.
“Had I been going to college at 8 a.m. in a shiny, happy way with a cup of coffee and filled my notes up, I guarantee you I wouldn’t be fighting the left the way that I am,” Breitbart confesses on a New Orleans street outside the Tulane campus. “I probably would have embraced that mindset. So I kind of realize I dodged a bullet.”
One of the best sequences in the documentary shows Breitbart confronting blogger Max Blumenthal, the former senior writer of the Daily Beast, over whether or not Blumenthal called Breitbart a “racist” in print.
Breitbart fearlessly gets in Blumenthal’s face and challenges him to retract what he wrote.
“I have two modes,” Breitbart explains to an audience from the podium. “Mode One is jocularity and Mode Two is righteous indignation.”
Marcus explained to WND he wanted to show the audience that Breitbart lived to confront the radical left with its lies.
From the podium, Breitbart proves Marcus’ point.
“I love confrontation, and by the way, and so should you,” Breitbart tells the audience. “It’s the only way we’re going to win. We have to confront these people. We have to videotape them. We have to put it on the Internet. We have to shove it in the mainstream media’s face saying, ‘No, they’re the racists, they’re the intimidators, they’re ones who are caught on tape being violent.”
Marcus began the documentary with a Breitbart soliloquy that Breitbart ends by carefully articulating a single word with emphasis and meaning. “War!” Breitbart says, summing up much of his journalistic career.
“We have an obligation to confront them,” Breitbart concluded his speech to appreciative applause. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime obligation to take on the institutional left. Please join the fight.”
Controversial even in death
Marcus told WND he had no reason to disbelieve the family’s story that what killed Breitbart was a heart ailment that he did not fully realize he had until a year before his death.
“You have to understand that Breitbart never slept,” Marcus explained. “He would give a speech and then spend hours afterwards with his fans and supporters, only to realize it was morning and he had to rush off to catch an airplane for the next event.”
In May 2012, WND reported Los Angeles private investigator Paul Huebl interviewed Christopher Lasseter, 26, the eyewitness who was walking his dog outside the Brentwood Restaurant when he saw Breitbart leave the restaurant, cross the street and drop dead as he reached the curb.
Lasseter said he did not initially notice anything unusual about how Breitbart looked. When Breitbart reached the curb across the street, Lasseter said he observed, “Breitbart took one step up onto the curb and dropped like a sack of bricks.”
Lasseter said he knew Breitbart was dead as soon as he walked up and looked; he shook off any suggestion he suspected foul play in Breitbart’s death.
WND was never able to locate other witnesses who reportedly claimed that in the days leading up to his death, Breitbart was particularly paranoid that he was being followed.
Movie critics still hate Breitbart
Even in death, Breitbart’s critics on the left continue to hate him.
Evidence of this is the on movie website RottenTomatoes.com, where the “TomatoMeter” shows a grand total of six movie critics give the “Hating Breitbart” documentary a “zero” rating, displayed side-by-side with an audience rating in which 415 viewers rate the documentary “94” out of a total of “100.”
“Hating Breitbart” is currently being shown in select theaters in some 15 different markets in the United States, as listed on the movie’s official website.
It is available on Amazon.com both as a DVD and for viewing as an Amazon Instant Video. Currently, “Hating Breitbart” is listed in the top 20 documentaries on Amazon.com.
The documentary is also available for viewing on Netflix.com.
